Masked
by Sincynati
Summary: He was running out of secrets. The only one he had left was hidden under a thin layer of black cloth, and there were people who would do anything to find out his last secret.


**Disclaimer:** Hatake Kakashi is not mine. Nor is Kakashi's mother or the townspeople of Kohnoha. Nor is the English language, numbers, italics, and any other form of anything you see in the story. The only thing that is mine is the plot. :)

Enjoy~

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**Masked**

Hatake Kakashi wasn't a handsome man, nor was he an ugly one. He had no scar decorating his face, or some wild, uncommon feature. No- despite the common belief, Kakashi's face was so bland, so normal that you couldn't pick him out of a crowd were it not for the mask disguising him and his bushy hair. Only four people had ever seen him without his mask off, and all of them where dead.

He would smile to himself whenever he heard rumors about his face- it was better than them knowing what he really looked like. The world didn't need to know everything about him.

It wasn't vanity that drove him to wear the mask- in fact, he couldn't care less about his face. After all, he had expected to have received many more scars on it by this age then the single one across his eye. It was just that now, his face was the only secret he had to himself.

He didn't wear the mask, not at first. He walked everywhere without it, at home and in public. Nobody cared, nobody noticed. But once he became a ninja, all of his secrets where taken away from him. Kakashi Hatake, five years old and a ninja. He was 3 feet and eleven inches tall, forty pounds. Apparently his hair really was natural, and he was missing a tooth in the back that never grew back in.

Kakashi didn't like all of his personal information to be common knowledge to the everyday idiot, so he had his mother sew a mask into all his clothes to keep him hidden.

Nobody noticed yet. He was five.

"He'll grow out of it," they all said.

They were wrong.

It became noticeable in his adolescent years, in the summer. "Hasn't he been wearing that mask for six years now?" they would ask. "What is he hiding?"

Of course, the village came to their many conclusions and Kakashi never said otherwise.

All in all, the mask became very useful. Nobody could see his true feelings. He didn't really need the mask for a cover, he had already perfected the art of lying. But it was a comfort, really. A extra layer of protection from prying eyes.

It hid his only secret.

So what if everyone else wanted to know what he looked like? They could live without knowing- they were alive now, weren't they?

His mask gave him an anonymity that he otherwise wouldn't have, granting an aura of mystery around him.

Nobody could see him smile, no one could see his frown, they couldn't see him bite his lip to keep silent. Only when he showed his emotions through his eyes- which was rare- did one get a impression of what he was feeling, and even then, it was always a lie.

He didn't necessarily like it that way, always hiding. But he didn't want to be known, not in the way he was.

Maybe one day he would reveal his face, just take off the mask and walk around the village as though it was normal. But then he would have to have another secret for his knowledge alone, and he was running out- it wasn't likely that one would fall out of the sky.

People used to ask him why he wore the mask, putting up with his snide remarks and sarcasm until, one day, they just gave up. The mask defined Kakashi. But they would never know the reason he wore it, no, he knew they wouldn't understand.

There are always the fools who want to be famous, the idiots who will do anything to be known by everyone. But Kakashi knew better.

You are never alone, you never have any peace. People are always around you, trying to get close. Always wanting to know your secrets, wanting to know everything about you.

That was no life. But it was the life Kakashi lived.

Sometimes he would wake up at night, sweating- not from fear, but from his mask and the suffocating heat it produced. Sometimes he would briefly wondered if he had finally died. As a accomplished ninja, he had expected to die in battle a long time ago, or wake up to a kunai in his back. Sometimes he even thought maybe he would ram himself with a sword and just be done with it.

After all, it wasn't natural for a son to see his father die by his own hand.

That's when he would remember that he was alive. At least, he hoped he was.


End file.
